Reflections on the Rudradeb Mitra Interview
Listen to the interview here (Apple, Spotify)
Richard’s thoughts:
“Rudradeb managed to build a financially successful enterprise that has a powerful positive social impact - Omdena. That’s unusual. He has overcome the big challenge of building a two-sided marketplace — on the supply side for people who want to get real-world experience with AI projects and on the demand side for non-profits, organizations, and businesses that want to get AI projects done. Very often, sensible concepts like this fail because of the challenge of matching supply and demand — the “chicken and egg” problem of either having plenty of projects and not enough people or vice versa.
As you listen to our conversation, reflect on not just Rudradeb’s achievements but his mindset. You’ll learn how he overcame parental preference towards having a safe job, how he initially achieved business success and got out because it was not what he wanted, how the desire to impress others reveals insecurities, and why ‘living the dream’ of sitting on a beach with no material need unmet absolutely doesn’t work for people like Rudradeb.”
Kimon’s thoughts:
“I am a big fan of Sal Khan and Khan Academy and what can be done with tech and education at scale. I often think about what next projects I might want to be involved in in the future and something around education and helping people better themselves often places high on my list.
What Rudradreb is doing with Omdena is quite cool. He has set up a platform that allows people to get in at an early entry level through the Omdena university, learn to code, and become data scientists. There is an automated assessment model that helps move people up as they pass tests so that they can start to work on real-world projects. The first projects are unpaid but, as people are assessed and prove themselves, they can work their way up toward paid projects.
Ultimately it is a model that gives people careers. The best part, they work for NGOs on projects that actually help people. Analyzing satellite data to identify the best locations for schools in Sudan is an example of one such project. How many jobs out there are making that much of an impact? So many CEOs would love to have something like that in their mission statements to get their teams fired up! It becomes a whole lot easier to create a culture of engagement when the company is working on such noble missions.
I love the idea of community-based business that makes a positive impact in the world, and Omdena is a great example that I would hope a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs would consider.”